Mini Fic Grab Bag! PxL
by D.K. Archer
Summary: A collection of little ficlets for Peasley and Luigi. Contains SLASH


Mini Fic Grab Bag!  
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga Rating: PG-13 tops. Contains tame 'PG' curses and slash.

NOTES AND WARNINGS: The following is a mini-fic grab bag, meaning a whole lot of little fanfictions that aren't enough to warrent their very own posts, but I like to much to just scrap. This contains four of them, and all of them contain elements of SLASH between LUIGI and PRINCE PEASLEY. If this will bother or offend you, please click the back button now. Everyone else, have fun!

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"It's not so strange, is it?" Luigi asked miserably, sitting at the kitchen table in the cold, early morning light. There was a rose on the window sill, in a little cut glass vase, light coming through the water and casting a shattered rainbow on the table top. The yellow rose was wilting a little. 

Mario set a cup of coffee down in front of his brother, holding his own thoughtfully.

"It is a little strange." He admitted. 

Luigi looked up at him. "Why?"

"Well, because he's a plant." Mario replied bluntly, sitting down across from him.

"Not because he's a guy?"

"No, definitely because he's a plant." Mario said, taking a slow sip of his coffee.

Luigi just stared unhappily into his own. "Dad would kill me." he muttered.

Mario frowned. "Dad?"

"Yeah." He mumbled, running a gloved finger around the edge of his coffee mug. "You know what our father thought about me and…that."

Mario set his mug down on the table. "Luigi," he said. "I think if Dad ever found out where we've been the past few years, the fact you're dating a prince would be the least of his worries."

"You think?"

Mario ticked them off on his fingers. "Lets see. Magic mushroom people, a giant turtle bent on world domination, flying boats, flying beans, man eating plants and living rocks. Just how strange does 'dating a man' sound compared to all that?"

"….Still a little strange." Luigi admitted.

"Only because we're Catholic." Mario pointed out.

"….."

Mario smiled. "Look he'll probably never find out anyway. And if he does, who cares? It's really not that bad. And if you're happy with it, I certainly don't care if you're dating a man." Mario took another drink of his coffee. "…..Now, the fact you're dating a PLANT, however…."

"Shut up."

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"Alright, now….what?"

"It's easy, just take a shirt in the tub, and scrub it over the washboard." Luigi explained, wringing laundry out in the sideyard and turning the grass into mud.

Prince Peasley, who was currently on his knees in said mud, shoved his ungloved arms down into the washtub with a look on intense concentration. Luigi tried not to smirk. He came up with, of all things, a pair of Mario's underwear. He held them up, and his face colored a little.

"He puts a big red M on his underwear?" he asked, and Luigi snickered.

"It's the only way we can tell them apart." He said, still wringing water out of one of his shirts.

"So you wash your brother's underwear." Peasley said.

"Yes."

"….Why can't Mario wash his own underwear?"

"Because Mario can't do laundry to save his life." Luigi explained.

Peasley dropped Mario's underwear back in the washtub and found something else to scrub; a grungy pair of green overalls.

"Well I'M not washing his underwear." Peasley said. "If your brother wants his underwear washed he can come out and do it himself."

Luigi smiled and shook his head, a little surprised Peasley was doing laundry at ALL. But Luigi had refused to leave until the laundry was finished, and Peasley had decided to try to hurry him along a bit. His reasons were not entirely selfless, he was sure. The thought made Luigi's face color a bit.

"So you do the laundry, you cook dinner, and you clean the house." Peasley said after a while, handing Luigi another soaked pair of socks. "What does Mario do?"

"Mario saves the kingdom. Constantly." Luigi shrugged, wringing them out. 

"Well YOU save the kingdom too, don't you? At least once in a while. Mario should take on some of the chores, so you're not stuck out here quite so long."

Luigi looked at him. "…You're just irritated I have other things to do besides you. And you have to wait." He grinned, blushing a little at his own comment.

"Yes! Yes, exactly!" Peasley exclaimed. "It's a blow to the pride to continually take second place to laundry and dishes and dirty floors! I don't know why I put up with it!"

Luigi snickered. "I can think of a few good reasons."

"….Yes. Well. There is that."

Luigi gave him a smug look and Peasley grudgingly finished scrubbing.

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"Oh, good Lord, I did not need to see that." Mario said, rubbing his forehead as he sat down at the kitchen table. From the other room he could hear frantic scrabbling and hissed voices, the sound of something being knocked over, and Luigi cursing in Italian. Mario rubbed his temples, wondering if there was a way to just blot the last 20 seconds from memory short of getting completely smashed.

After a moment Luigi came scrambling out, his hair messed up and his face beet red. His shirt was on backwards and he'd forgotten his shoes.

"M-Mario!" Luigi stammered, with a nervous laugh. "I th-thought you were still at the palace!"

"I was." Mario said, "I finished the repairs a couple hours ago and decided to head home."

Luigi was trying to smooth his hair back flat. "Well w-why didn't you shout or something?"

"I did." Mario said flatly. "You were apparently occupied."

Luigi covered his face, embarrassed. "I am SO sorry."

They could hear someone trip over something in Luigi's room, cursing, and then the sound of the door opening again. Prince Peasley looked a little more together. He'd remembered to put his sandals on, at least, though the laces were done up wrong. Face red, he was tugging his gloves.

"Hello, ah, Mario. Nice to see you again." Peasley said, apparently deciding to ignore a supremely awkward situation. "All went well at the Palace, I assume?"

Mario stared at him. "Yes. Yes it did."

"Ah, excellent. Well, ah…" He tucked his hair back behind his ears. It was a little messy, but not nearly as bad as Luigi's. "I'm sure I really must be going." He said, and even his ears were red. "They'll be missing me. Luigi, would you see me out?"

Luigi nodded and hurried off after him towards the front door. Mario stared after them for a moment, then dropped his forehead onto the kitchen table, knocking his cap off.

Next time, he'd remember to knock before entering.

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It was late, and the Prince was drunk, and Luigi couldn't manage to blame him. Out the massive balcony window of Prince Peasley's room he could see the flagpoles in the yard, illuminated by electric lights at this late hour, and all of them were empty. The garden stretched out beyond that, black and silent in the dark, and the thick interior wall beyond that, lit on top where watchmen stayed the night. The fire was dimming in the Prince's hearth but there weren't any other lights on, just a dull red glow over everything. Luigi, still stuck in his best clothes but with his hat returned to his head, sat in one of the chairs there, holding a half empty glass of too-expensive brandy in his hands. The Prince, slouched in the opposite chair, had a full one. The bottle next to him, however, was empty.

Luigi recalled getting that drunk the night after his father's funeral. He'd felt worse the next morning. He also knew that telling Peasley that wouldn't do a bit of good, so he kept his mouth shut.

"So tomorrow." Peasley muttered, after a long, slow silence. "Tomorrow's the coronation. I haven't even had time to take a shower in three days and I have to be crowned tomorrow."

Luigi watched him. The Prince obviously wasn't looking for any kind of commentary.

"I'm going to show up reeking with a hangover tomorrow and bam, there I am, Crowned Prince." He said, looking at the fire through the brandy glass. "Unless I, you know, forfeit or something. Then my cousin Francis gets it." He snorted. "King Francis."

Luigi frowned. "You aren't planning to forfeit, are you?"

Peasley was quiet for a moment too long. "No." he mumbled finally. "No, I'm not going to forfeit. She wanted me to be King one day. She'll have to settle for Crowned Prince, though."

"What's the difference?"

Peasley snorted again, not a very Princely sound. "King's have to be married. Good Lord, can you imagine it? Me? Married? To a woman? There but for the grace of God…" He took another drink from his glass.

Luigi looked down at his, fidgeting with it.

"Your ears are red." Peasley said after a moment.

Luigi mumbled something and took a drink to hide it. Peasley chuckled darkly.

"Cousin Frank will get the crown eventually, I'm sure. Not as soon as he'd like, but eventually." Peasley scratched at his chin. "Not like I'll be having children. My mother's line ends with me."

Silence again. The past hour or two had been full of silences, most of them of the awkward variety. At least, for Luigi. He didn't know what to say. He never knew what to say. Mario was the one who could deal with things like this. He remembered, at their father's funeral, Mario had been the one keeping their mother together. He'd been the one who got things organized, who took care of the arrangements, who knew what to say to everyone. Luigi? Luigi had just cried, and been silent. He'd thought not having talked to his father for so long should have made his passing easier. 

He'd been wrong.

Peasley, who had just today made that trip down into the crypts, where his father, the Prince Consort, was already buried, was running one gloved finger around the rim of his glass, eyes staring vacantly. Luigi knew that look. He knew it very well.

"….I can't believe it's only been three days." Peasley said faintly, voice too light. "Three damned days. All those people and all those cameras and everybody saying how sorry they are, and how she was such a wonderful Queen and how she—" He paused, eyes shiny. "Everyone wants me to just pick up again, right where she left off. The Queen is dead and now it's her son's job to try to run everything for them. It's my job to make all the right decisions, and, and I haven't even had time to stop and take a damned shower, it's just been go here, go there, look stoic for the cameras, here put this on the funerals in an hour, maybe you'd better get some sleep, you don't want bags under your eyes for the coronation, isn't it wonderful you'll be in charge now, I'm so sorry it had to be this way, she was such a wonderful Queen—" He was babbling and he stopped himself, lip quivering. He held it for almost five seconds.

Then it broke.

"She was my MOTHER!" he shouted, tears spilling out of his eyes finally, and he hitched, deep and ragged and painful. "She was my god damned MOTHER, and now she's DEAD! Why can't they just l-leave me alone! Wh-why—why can't—" He hitched, nearly choked. "Why can't they just leave me ALONE?"

Luigi quickly set his glass down by the foot of the chair and stood up, going to kneel by the Prince. He hesitated. The Prince dropped his glass, spilling brandy on an expensive carpet, and put his hands over his face, knees curling up to meet his chest and making the most god awful sound.

Feeling clueless and terrible, Luigi finally put an awkward arm around Peasley's back, unsure what else to do with himself. The Prince gabbed his collar like a lifeline and buried his face in his shoulder, hitching and sobbing and making terrible, wet sounds. Luigi wrapped his arms around him, and held on.

The next morning the Prince was where he should be, when he should be. He looked properly somber for the cameras, sad when he should be sad, happy when he should be happy. He took the throne at ten in the morning, by noon he'd made his first royal decision. 

As he'd stood before the archbishop, holding a scepter in one hand and the blessings of the church in the other, his eyes had scoured the crowd in a moment of weakness, finding Luigi's green cap. He locked, and held his gaze.

Luigi looked right back at him. 

And the Prince made it through. 


End file.
